Assessing the distribution and trade-offs of selected ecosystem services in high nature value (HNV) agricultural landscapes

Agricultural ecosystems provide a wide range of ecosystem services fundamental to human well-being. Ecosystem services in agricultural ecosystems are not independent of each other and trade-offs between different ecosystem services are often inevitable. The provision of different ecosystem services is spatially explicit and reflects land cover and land use conditions and changes. Thus, mapping ecosystem services may provide valuable information on ecosystem services distribution and trade-offs in a study area. In this study we modelled and mapped at landscape level selected regulating services (pollination, carbon storage and habitat quality) and provisioning services (grass dry matter production potential) with the aim to evaluate their distribution and trade-offs in the case study region (The Burren in the Republic of Ireland). This study also aims to explore optimal sustainable land-use management and to provide new insights on ecosystem services modelling and mapping. Findings from the study indicate that the group of calcareous grassland and heath mosaics showed the highest values for regulating services, while still producing a certain amount of provisioning services. Intensively managed agricultural grasslands generally showed lower values of regulating services but higher provisioning services on foot of higher grass dry matter production, highlighting a trade-off between regulating and provisioning services. Therefore, appropriate management strategies should above all target these two habitat categories to enhance ecosystem services provision and minimise their trade-offs. This study demonstrates that the methodology carried out to model and map selected ecosystem services in the study region may represent an appropriate tool to assess ecosystem services spatial distribution and trade-offs at landscape level, providing valuable spatially explicit information for optimal management of natural resources. Ultimately, this study highlights the importance of site-specific primary data and high-resolution spatial dataset to develop more accurate ecosystem services maps and to scale up mapping approaches without losing map accuracy.